The Perfect Kiss (23 page)

Dominic gave her an awkward nod and walked in frozen silence to his horse. He tucked the precious oilskin bundle into his saddlebag and mounted his horse.

“You didn’t mind Mam hugging you like that, did you, m’lord?” Tasker asked after a moment or two.

Dominic shook his head curtly. He couldn’t trust himself to speak. His emotions were in turmoil.

“Powerful fond of your mother she was,” Tasker explained. “She wept for days when Mr. Podmore told her Miss Beth had died.”

Dominic’s head whipped up at that. “
Podmore
told her?”

“Oh, aye. Mr. Podmore, he always makes a point of looking in on Mam. Sweet on Miss Beth, Mam reckons he was, and liked the opportunity of talking about her with someone else who loved her. Mam reckons there’s comfort to be had in that.”

Dominic bit his lip. She was right. He hadn’t spoken of his mother since the day he’d buried her, for no one he knew had known her. Now, since he’d come to Wolfestone, he’d met two people who not only knew her but had loved her. And in the pain of talking about her, there had been comfort as well.

What irony, to find them both at Wolfestone, the place he’d sworn to destroy.

After a few miles had passed he said to Jake, “How did your mother hurt her leg?”

There was a short silence. “You don’t know?”

A sense of foreboding filled Dominic. He shook his head.

“It got busted up badly the night Miss Beth run off. When your pa found out she’d gone, he was wild with fury.” He rode on a few paces more and then added, “Mam wouldn’t tell him where Miss Beth had gone, so your pa threw her down the stairs.”

GRACE SAT IN THE LIBRARY, READING THROUGH THE SLENDER volume of poems Dominic had given her. After Dominic’s discovery of the little book, she’d searched all through the shelves in the hope of discovering more texts in Arabic, but she hadn’t found a single one. How strange to have just one book in that language.

But what a wonderful one to have. She hugged it to her bosom. Such a romantic inscription. The more she read, the more she could see that Faisal had loved his dove very much.

One of the poems in the little leather book had already become her all-time favorite poem. Written a thousand years before, it was still fresh and lovely enough to make her weep.

 
And she came like bright dawn opening a path through the night or like the wind skimming the surface of a river.

The horizon all around me breathed out perfume announcing her arrival as the fragrance precedes a flower.

 
The door opened and Mr. Netterton entered. “Oh, terribly sorry. Didn’t mean to disturb you, Greystoke. Miss Pettifer has just gone back up to tend to her father and I thought I’d snatch a few moments to write some letters . . . well, actually . . . a sermon.”

He looked rather self-conscious. “Thing is, I’ve never actually conducted a whole service before, not by myself. Oh, don’t look so surprised, I know all the rote stuff, it’s the sermon I’m worried about. Thought I could crib a few ideas. Bound to be books of sermons in that lot.” He gestured to the shelves of dusty old books.

“Yes, I can see that it would be a bit nerve-wracking,” she agreed. “Your first time, and I imagine you’ll want to make a good impression on your new flock.”

“Flock.”
He pulled a face. “I don’t feel like anyone’s shepherd. And if you want to know the truth, I think I’ve slept through almost every sermon I’ve ever heard. Dreary stuff.”

She smiled at him. “Then you know exactly what to do.”

He looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you know how
not
to write a sermon. Why don’t you write the sort of sermon that you would have liked before you, er, found your vocation.”

He snorted. “The only sermon I would have liked was one that was as short as all get out, maybe with a joke or two and with no jaw-me-dead moralizing.”

She laughed, surprising herself. “Exactly. It’s your sermon, after all.”

His jaw dropped. “Oh, I say, what a good idea. If you don’t mind, I’ll make a few notes while your suggestion is fresh in my mind.” He sat down at the desk and started to write.

They stayed like that for some time, Grace lost in the beauty of medieval poetry rising fresh and lovely from the page a thousand years after it was first penned, Mr. Netterton scribbling rapidly, filling several sheets of paper, then screwing them up and starting again.

After a while Grace became aware that he’d finished writing and was staring blankly at a wall of books.

“Finished?”

He started. “Yes. Yes, I think so.” He looked doubtfully at the sheet of paper in front of him. “It’s very short.”

She laughed at the expression on his face. “Don’t worry. I’m sure everyone will be grateful. What’s the subject?”

He looked a bit embarrassed. “Er, it’s a sort of fable, not from the Bible, actually. About the dog in the manger—not Jesus’s manger, of course, another sort of manger entirely. In a different country. In a different time.”

“It sounds just the ticket,” she assured him. “A nice rural theme for a rural parish. In any case, you’ll be writing sermons for the rest of your life. There’s no hurry. You’ll get the hang of it eventually.”

He looked appalled. “It’s just like school,” he said mournfully. “Hated essays then. Why the dev—er, deuce did I choose a career that involved writing?”

It was an opening Grace couldn’t resist. “You knew Lord D’Acre at school, didn’t you? What was he like then?”

Frey grinned reminiscently, glad to be changing the subject. “He was a bit of a savage at the beginning. Spoke English with a slight foreign accent and would fight anyone who looked sideways at him. That’s how we met, actually. We had a good old punch-up—forgotten what it was about—but we slogged into each other until neither of us could stand, and ended up best friends.” He said it quite matter-of-factly.

She must have looked as horrified as she felt, for he laughed and said, “Can see you haven’t any brothers, Greystoke. Boys are like that. Uncivilized young brutes. Perfectly normal to punch the living daylights out of each other and wind up friends. Happens all the time.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Grace said.

“Anyway, after that we were inseparable. Did everything together—games, lessons, mischief . . . Would have spent the holidays together, too, if we’d been allowed.” His smile dimmed. “Bad show, that.”

“What was?”

He looked uncomfortable. “Not sure he’d want me to be telling this stuff.”

“But it’s all in the past. What can it hurt?” Grace coaxed. She wanted to know all about him. “And besides, I won’t tell a soul.”

Mr. Netterton thought for a minute and then nodded. “Thing is, it was his father had him brought to England and to Eton. Hadn’t known about the boy for years, but someone spotted him with his mother and, well, Dom is the spitting image of his father, so there’s no doubt of his blood! As soon as the old man found out, he wanted him trained for the position he would one day take—heir to Wolfestone and the D’Acre title, that sort of thing. His mother was in . . . Egypt or somewhere I think. Too far, anyway, for Dom to go to his mother’s for holidays—not that his father would have allowed it. Once he’d got his hands on Dom, he wasn’t going to let him leave England again. Kept him short of funds the whole time. Poorest boy in Eton, he was—or should have been. Thing about Dom is, he has this knack for making money—amazing he is!” He pondered this for a moment. “Where was I?”

“Holidays,” she prompted him.

“Yes, well, my parents would have been happy to have Dom spend his holidays with us. Keep us both entertained. M’father wrote to old Lord D’Acre for permission.” He grimaced. “Turned m’father down. Dom wrote and asked, too. Said no, every time.”

“I expect he wanted Dominic to spend them with him.”

Mr. Netterton shook his head. “No. Dom only ever met his father twice in his life. Never spent more than an hour in his company.”

“What? Not even for holidays?”

“No. Fixed it that Dom wasn’t allowed to leave the school at all. Not ever. Think the old man was afraid that Dom would try to escape—and he wasn’t far wrong at that.”

“Wasn’t he happy at school?”

“Not that. He was worried sick about his mother. Hadn’t heard a word from her since he set foot in England. And d’you know why?” His voice rose in indignation. “That father of his had stopped all her letters. Dom found out eventually from his father’s lawyer—old Podmore. Fellow was acting for his father, but seems to have had a soft spot for the mother and thought that old Lord D’Acre was doing the wrong thing by the boy.”

“I should think so, too!” Grace declared, feeling quite upset by the thought of young Dominic incarcerated in a school in a foreign land—and then forbidden letters from his mother.

“The school was under instructions to send his mother’s letters to the lawyer, and the lawyer was under instructions to destroy them, which he did.”

Grace was horrified. “Destroy his mother’s letters! How could anyone be so cruel?”

Mr. Netterton winked and tapped his nose. “Cunning beggar, Podmore. Copied the letters first, didn’t he? Burned the originals as instructed. Sent the copies to Dom, passing them off as his own letters. School wasn’t told to stop Dom getting letters from his pa’s lawyer.”

Grace clasped her hands together. “What a wonderful man!”

“The fellow saved Dom’s sanity, I believe. Stands to reason, a boy who’s spent the first twelve years of his life looking after his mother isn’t going to abandon her just because some father he’s never met tells him to!” He made a scornful noise.

“His father must have been a very unfeeling sort of person,” she said thoughtfully. At twelve a boy was still very much a child and needed his mother. Her heart bled for that boy.

“He was a right ogre,” Mr. Netterton agreed. “Wouldn’t even let Dom spend Christmas or Easter with any of his friends. Never had a proper English Christmas, Dom, poor beggar. The first few years he used to ask me all about it—you could tell he was dying to experience it for himself. In Egypt and Italy they don’t do Christmas like we do in England, with all the trimmings. He used to hang on every tale, at first . . .” He broke off, shaking his head.

“Tell me,” she prompted softly.

“Well he hoped, you see. Every year his father let him think there was a possibility he might be asked to Wolfestone for Christmas . . . Dom would get all excited—not that he’d say anything, but he’d get . . . I don’t know, keyed up. Well, stands to reason—your first family Christmas, meet the relatives, clap eyes on Wolfestone, the place you’re going to inherit . . .”

“And?”

“Every year it was called off at the last minute. Year after year. One year a coach came with his father’s crest on it and you should have seen the look on Dom’s face! Those odd eyes of his fairly blazed with excitement. All his Christmases coming at once—literally.” He clenched his fist. “Turned out to be a footman bringing him a set of new clothes—someone must have reported that he’d outgrown all his others—and a history of the Wolfe family for him to study over the holidays.” He gave her a somber look. “Bastard even set him a test, afterward.”

“Did his father not realize what he was doing?”

“I don’t think he cared. I don’t think he ever thought of Dom as someone with feelings. He was just the heir.”

“What an inheritance.” She knew now where his intense bitterness about Wolfestone had come from.

Frey nodded. “Yes, and after that Dom just sneered at the mention of Christmas or holidays. Said they meant nothing, that he couldn’t care less, that it was a stupid English custom, and that he had better things to do.”

“People do cover up when they’re hurt,” Grace whispered. “Poor little boy cut off from all comfort and joy . . .”

“Stupid of his father, trying to cut him off from his mother and keep him locked up in the school.”

“Criminal!” she said fiercely.

“That, too. But stupid most of all.” He considered it a moment and added, “Taught me a lot, come to think of it. Never can force things of that sort. Loyalty. Allegiance.”

“Love,” Grace added.

He nodded. “Has the opposite effect if you try.” He sat back in his chair. “The day he finished school, Dom was to go to Wolfestone. His father had instructed the school that he wasn’t to go up to Oxford—though unlike me, he would have made a fine scholar—he was to go to Wolfestone and learn how to manage the estate.” He grinned. “Only one of the masters made the mistake of telling Dom in advance.”

Grace sat forward, excited. “What happened?”

“His father’s carriage arrived to collect him, but Dom had left in the night. He’d amassed enough money for a fare to take him home.”

“To Egypt?” Grace was stunned. “By himself?”

Mr. Netterton nodded proudly. “All the way to Egypt, crossing the continent entirely on his own. He crossed France in the middle of Boney whipping the frogs into a new frenzy, and he missed Waterloo by a couple of weeks! Amazing journey!”

“His mother must have been so happy to see him after all those years.”

“Ah, well . . .” Mr. Netterton’s face fell. He looked uncomfortable. “That was the biggest tragedy of all. When he got there, he found her deathly ill. He did all he could but she died in his arms just one day after he got there.” He was silent a long while, then added, “He never set foot on English soil again until the old man was dead.” He pulled out a clean, white handkerchief and handed it to her.

Grace took it mechanically, not knowing why he’d given it to her.

“Your cheeks are wet,” he explained.

She rubbed at her cheeks and eyes, feeling angry and upset on behalf of the child who had been Dominic. No wonder he seemed so hard and cynical at times and tried so hard not to show he cared about anyone or anything. His father had left him a bitter legacy indeed.

Chapter Fourteen

Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any
care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in
Hell’s despair.

WILLIAM BLAKE

 
 
 
“MY BOOTS ARE RUINED,” DOMINIC GROWLED AT JAKE TASKER. THE estate tour was taking a great deal longer than he’d expected or wanted. At every farm and every cottage, he’d had to dismount and tramp over every inch of the blasted property.